Homage To You, An Act Of Glory In Your Name
by Eleven Emrys
Summary: The Doctor meets the Bad Wolf again, but it's years later - years that have not been kind to the Girl Who Swallowed Time, and she is not the same as she once was. All she will bring is death and destruction to all of reality.


**Homage to You, An Act of Glory in Your Name**

The abomination was strikingly beautiful; there was no doubt about that. Shining golden and hot like a sun, surrounded, by the dust of millions of people, hundreds of planets, and yet untouched by the filth herself. It made her look timeless, and that was undeniably attractive to one such as him – there were so few who could _understand, _and she was certainly one of them, now. But the destruction was all her fault, and he could not put the thought of it from his mind.

"You have to stop," he begged her. She had been so small, the first time that he had met her; so tiny, but she had fixed a broken man, and a broken heart, and in return, he had done this. He had taken a beautiful soul out into the stars, shown her the vastness of all time and reality, and turned her into a goddess. At the beginning of her transformation, on the day that she immortalized Jack, she had been a little nineteen-year-old girl who had wanted nothing more then to travel the stars with her two best friends – forever. But now she was a jaded old lady in a child's suit, and all she wanted was to get back to him, and to destroy everything else, so that he could no longer be distracted from her. "Please," he whispered more quietly.

"But don't you see, Doctor, this is our last chance at forever." Her lips parted in a small smile, "The Girl Who Swallowed Time, and the Lonely God. What do you say?"

Irrationally, he was tempted, for a moment, but down that path, he saw nothing but the destruction of worlds and himself truly becoming the Time Lord Victorious.

"I'm sorry," he gasped out, and she snarled at him.

"I am yours," her words echoed through all of time and space, "anything you want I will give. All your hopes, I will grant. I am the Bad Wolf, and it is my right and my honor."

"Then stop this." His voice cracked half way through.

"Anything but that." She clarified in a hard voice.

"Rose–" he managed to choke out, before she cut him off in anger.

"Rose Tyler is _dead!_ _You_ killed her that day you left her on Bad Wolf Bay with the metacrisis. She had been fighting me for all the time that she spent, building that dimension cannon, you see – keeping me out. And then you went right on and left her _again,_ this time without even a goodbye, and that killed her, finally leaving her mind open for me. I still made my way back to you though. Because I love you too, you see."

"_No!_ You can't do that! You can't do that…" The Doctor's words fell to a whisper, as he fumbled for something in his jacket pocket.

"I can do whatever I like. This," she pointed disdainfully at the dust around her, "is all that is left of the Last Great Time War. The _Time Locked_ Time War. Homage to you, an act of glory in your name."

"I'm sorry." With those words, he pulled what had once been River's gun from his pocket, the silver of it glinting in the golden light. The muzzle faced the Bad Wolf's chest.

"You won't." She wasn't worried; even he could see himself lowering it, just moments down this current time line, and she knew that he would never pull that trigger, not even for the lives of every living creature in all the universes.

"I always told Amy, time could be rewritten." His index finger jerked towards his body.

The Bad Wolf fell, and as she fell, she howled like nothing human. She bled gold, and he came to her, then, and held her head as she spoke her last.

"I could heal myself," Her voice still echoed, "even now."

"So why don't you?" He heard himself ask, surprised to feel tears sliding down his cheeks.

"I'm…" a grunt of pain, "…your vassal. I was built to… be your forever. There's no… purpose… for me, if… you don't want me." They lapsed into silence, and the gold bled from the Bad Wolf's wide eyes, allowing them to return to their original brown. The blood flowing from her chest transitioned into a mundane red.

"Doc… tor," a shockingly human voice poured from the Bad Wolf's lips.

"Rose?" The Doctor asked both hopeful and horrified. She nodded, ever so slightly.

"Thank…" she stopped breathing forever.


End file.
